Chicago: This Is Grand

More words I have used in this paper, apparently written by "BIZARRO JENNY": Capitalism paradigm. Ghettoizing.

Also: This is the mouse we caught earlier:

http://static.flickr.com/46/144879789_05f77922df.jpg

That's a great mouse photo.

The cats aren't so good as mouse catchers, but they make excellent mouse detectors. They're like pointers. You just look in the spot where they are staring intently and VOILA! Mini-mouse.

(oh, btw jenny, that lawyer joke you made in the previous thread about labour lawyers saying the word 'fuck' like smurfs say 'smurf' made me laugh a lot. and i don't even know any labour lawyers. so xpost but whatevs. it also makes me think i'd be a good labour lawyer.)

BUT HEY GUESS WHAT??? 15 pages, 3,791 words and I AM DONE. Well, I have one more exam to do this weekend, but this was ze biggie. Now I'm going to go enjoy my precious six hours of sleep and not think about the zombie I am going to be tomorrow.

Thanks, Jenny.

Did anyone notice this contribution by our pal JW? Chicago:This Is Grand (NSFW). The penispallooza pic features a very cute back side.

Great mouse!!

Happy Birthday, Jesse!

Also: Paul Simon was on NPR the other day b/c of his new album. He collaborated with Brian Eno. This is probably old news to you.

I'm settling in with a cup of chamomile tea, the oven is on medium and Diamanda is a'screechin' and a'keenin'.

It occurred to me after I wrote this that it sounded like I had the oven on in order to commit suicide or in order to bake something. Neither is the case.

I have the oven on because IT IS 39 DEGREES and my A/C unit is only partially installed and it lets in a lot of 39 degree air. It only takes about 15 minutes on 500 to heat most of the apartment and then I leave it on 300 to maintain for a while.

The oven is on now.

we had a friend who turned on her broiler one day and a couple minutes later smelled burning hair. sure enough there had been a mouse living in the bottom of her stove. that would've freaked me out.

Killing mice with hammer = ACK ACK :((((( I don't mind when cats kill them, it seems like the proper sequence of events.

Jenny, that mouse is fucking adorable.

I found mouse poop a while back and set traps (which I have a fear of) and caught nothing.

Did You Know?

- In 4th grade my father and I took a trapping class provided by a northern Minnesota community college? I learned all about various traps and snares including the deadly connabair.

Now you know.

These days I would have a problem killing a mouse with a hammer.

i didn't really mind the mice either. we moved all our dry goods in the pantry into air-tight plastic containers. but when they found there way into the sweaters jen had put away for the summer and tore those up they weren't so fun anymore. when i came home one day and found mouse shit on my turntable i made it my mission to kill as many of them as i could. i would've poisoned everything in that place if it weren't for our chihuahua.

Apologies if this sounds immodest, but thanks, I agree; I was pleased.

BUUUUUUT....When I posted this I did not have the option to allow only registered users to post here. The option was not there. (Why?) So I am not entirely happy with this.

I am going to call our landlord today, though. I mean, our laundry machines have been broken for months and now we have mice (albeit cute ones)? Unacceptable for the amount of rent that we pay.

When I was takng the trash out last night a squirrel jumped out of one of the big bins, scared the fuck out of me.

GRRRRR squirrel(s) have been digging up my potted plants -- I have no idea what they expect to find besides potting soil and spearmint roots.

Then again, I'm not one to put up with much crap from any landlord.

From Vena Cava.

A lot of this album is from the perspective of one suffering from psychosis that comes in the final stages of AIDS. This part made me howl with laugther, as D.G. howled with kookiness.

ONCE when I lived in Atlanta? I was taking a bag of garbage out behind my apartment building and a DUDE jumped out of the dumpster. I nearly shat myself. I said, "I'M SORRY!!!" because, dang, I always threw a bag of trash on him. Then I gave him $5, because he lived in my damn dumpster.

Maybe it WAS Diamanda Galas...

A few minutes laster it happened again--whispering, forgetting, grunting. I had to turn it off.

I used to know someone who was a sound engineer and worked with DG. I didn't understand at the time why everyone found that so impressive/amusing, but then I didn't know about the cow's blood, either.

Okay, I just called my landlord and got in a fight with him. What a douche! Here's the story: "someone" is vandalizing our washing machines. He thinks it's someone with a key. He also thinks this is a "ring" of laundry vandalizers who are operating in Andersonville and Rogers Park. He kept pointing out that he has fixed them four times, at great expense.

"Why don't you just change the locks?" I asked, reasonably.

"Then I would have to redistribute keys," he said.

I asked him if that wouldn't be cheaper than having to keep repairing the washers and installing surveillance cameras and he said, "Then I would be redistributing the key to the vandals."

????

"You mean," I asked, "you think that the person running a laundry vandalism ring in Andersonville and Rogers park lives in our building?"

He said something about it being a conspiracy. For Christ's sake. Then he told me that I wasn't paying rent for the laundry facilities, I was paying rent for an apartment and the laundry was just an "amenity," i.e. a freebie, clearly not realizing that I HAVE NEARLY MEMORIZED the Chicago landlord tenant code.

What a fucking jackass.

I want to move, but seriously, is there a landlord in this world anywhere who ISN'T a total douchebag? I certainly haven't found him or her, if there is.

xpost

Also: The Story Of Them featuring Van Morrison rocks my iPod.

If so, he doesn't live at my house. Mine would be cool as a casual friend but his coping/life skills just aren't there and unfortunately MY health and happiness depends on HIS mental stability to a certain extent. Also his financial management skills. I wonder how far behind the mortgage payments are now, because I think after three months they start proceedings to take the property.............!!!!!!!

(Sorry to change the subject -- I just signed on after a long convo with the work peeps.)

The dude who got into a motorcycle accident and suffered a grievous head injury and would let himself into my apartment and be there staring at nothing when I got home. Also, I more than once shut the door in his face while he was talking (gently! I didn't slam it, it was more like, "Okay, thanks Richard you bet I'll talk to you soon take care now thanksforstoppingbyIgottagoseeya *shut*) because his head injury apparently made him unable to exit a social situation, ever.

Norlord, the guy who lived below me in the same building and had a cherry picker truck in the back yard and he'd get drunk and play with chainsaws and hang out in the driveway in his bathrobe drinking "martinis" which was nothing more than gin in a coffee cup.

This bitch in NC who let us live without heat for two weeks because she sent someone over to look at the furnace and the pilot light was on so she had no idea what was wrong. She also refused to fix a basement window that was broken and permitting wild animals and neighborhood cats to get into our house because she was sure a person couldn't fit through. She also said that the leaking pipes under the kitchen sink were our fault because we "bumped into them."

Also, weep for the wee mousies. The landlord is calling terminex. :(

did i mention i am so glad i didn't get a temp call today? nearly all week i've been at this alternative learning center (read: high school for teen moms/at risk youth) & while i can see myself working in an environment like that as a professional, as a 'knows nothing front desk lady' it sucked. also: being around teens = exhausting.

I was in Pilsen yesterday afternoon and got really excited when I passed the 18th St. station, because it's now a Pink Line station. The train came down the track from overhead, and I darted to see the pink "54th/Cermak" sign in the windows of each car. I was very tempted to run up and ride it for a few stops, but I think Kr would've rolled her eyes.

This didn't stop me from making an ill-advised joke about "riding [her] Pink Line."

* Chicago rides the Pink Line
* Chicago likes pancakes at the Golden Nugget

etc.

come to think of it, i heard this on saturday but i so rarely ride the brown line that i wasn't sure if it had always done that. i didn't think it did but i wasn't sure. i remember when i first came to chicago (and even for a while after i moved here) the announcement was for "Liberry, State, and Van Burnen". i was kind of sad when they fixed that.

http://img.epinions.com/images/opti/68/40/296922-resized200.JPG

everyone wanted all the money for themselves is what it gets distilled to. sorry for the preposition position.

Police perspective

some crazy creepy conservative dude

Chicago Defender editorial

"It's a dark day when we honor someone who would advocate killing policemen and who took great advantage of the communities he claimed to have been serving. We have real, everyday heroes within the department who would be better honored than someone of the stature of Fred Hampton."

Right. How can anybody think that an ordinance to change a street name to Chairman Fred Hampton Way would pass? The Chicago Defender is right, I think, about Hampton's justification for his "kill the pigs" comments, but it's so naive to believe that the police would see it from this perspective. Police loyalty runs deep to a fault. And (white) people in power are without a doubt afraid of any group that challenges this power, especially one with some popular support.

"In April, 2000, female aldermen and women's groups managed to defeat in committee an honorary street sign for Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, whom they called the "world's biggest pornographer," only to have Ald. Burton F. Natarus (42nd) use a parliamentary maneuver to ram it through the next day."

I don't know who Jan Terri is.

I'll bite (not literally), what's this about?

Please come see me pull a US flag out of my butt

WHY? For DEMOCRACY

HOW? As LA DINK
"...delightfully charmless ... like Carol Burnett on crack"
- The Carbondale Review

WHERE? DEMOCRACY BURLESQUE
a rather fun evening of politcal humor & music with a kick-ass MC at the No Exit Cafe on Glenwood b'twn Morse & Lunt

WHEN? Tuesday, July 11th @ 7.30pm

COST? $10 or pay what'cha want:
All proceeds benefit Illinois Healthcare Reform & one other left-leaning non-profit TBA

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!
Judith Harding

It could be a car dealership flag for all I know.